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This morning I try to write the account of a musical evening engraved indelibly on my heart and mind. Those of you who read my extensive notes know I can usually write quite rationally about music but this morning....I am still vibrating with what was presented to us...

How can words describe the overwhelming, profound experience of this great musical soul revealing itself.... All the Mozart was played far slower and at a more meditative tempo particularly K 457. Here was a thinking and deeply introspective, even philosophical Mozart. Ornamentation and inner details revealed as never before. The C-minor Fantasia emerged as an improvisation of thought, searching for, touching upon harmonies and shifting emotions as an opaque sun is intermittently revealed from behind rushing wi…

This post is for those of you who may have been reading my blog over the last six years. In many posts I described my travails in writing this latest book, a biography of Edward Cahill, the glamorous but now forgotten Australian concert pianist. A long journey but a rewarding one. The book was published by Australian Scholarly Publishing in November this year.

Available at: http://scholarly.info/book/516/ I managed to obtain three excellent reviews by eminent musicians of the rare private recordings of Liszt and Chopin that survived his peripatetic lifestyle. They generously made time from busy international schedules to listen via the internet to his recordings. This link will be printed in the book for readers to access. It will add a remarkable extra dimension and element of discovery to the biography of a now forgotten musician. His life was one that young pianists of today could only dream of living - a captivating social portrait of charm, leisure an…

This post is for those of you who may have been reading my blog over the last six years. In many posts I described my travails in writing this latest book, a biography of Edward Cahill, the glamorous but now forgotten Australian concert pianist. A long journey but a rewarding one. The book will be published by Australian Scholarly Publishing in November this year. I managed to obtain three excellent reviews by eminent musicians of the rare private recordings of Liszt and Chopin that survived his peripatetic lifestyle. They generously made time from busy international schedules to listen via the internet to his recordings. This link will be printed in the book for readers to access. It will add a remarkable extra dimension and element of discovery to the biography of a now forgotten musician. His life was one that young pianists of today could only dream of living - a captivating social portrait of charm, leisure and refinement that has vanished forever. I …

Click on photographs to enlarge On the closing evening of the Chopin i Jego Europa Festival I noticed a melee in the foyer of the Filharmonia. Who did I see but the famous Polish photographer Chris Niedenthal signing copies of his 'fresh off the press' book NIEDENTHAL CHOPIN - The 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Competition. He had been contracted by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute to cover the 2015 competition in photographs. This exciting moment was followed a couple of weeks later (September 8th) by the official book launch (cocktails, vodka, snacks) at the strikingly attractive, industrially deconstructed 101 Project Gallery of Modern Art in Central Warsaw - at 4 Nowogrodzka Street. There was also a recital of Chopin by the talented young pianists Krzysztof Markiewicz and Katarzyna Mróz. Appropriately for a Niedenthal event the police were present initially with agitated and tense expressions - they soon relaxed and disappeared after realizing it was merely an innocent …

And so it is straight into this excellent festival after Duszniki Zdroj! August in Poland is always dominated by outstanding performances of music in Warsaw with the additional time stress in writing an internet journal of my personal impressions. It is a great pity that you as a reader (if there are any out there) cannot refer to the substantial book that accompanies this festival which is one of the finest examples of serious programme notes and musicological introductions to both festival, concerts artists and music I have seen.

The Artistic Director of the Festival Mr. Stanislaw Leszczynski is to be heartily congratulated as ever for putting together such a fine collection of artists in what has now become a major European musical event.

I would like to go to everything but as is the case with many summer music festivals in Europe (Saltzburg, Verbier, Bayreuth, Cheltenham, the Proms) sometimes as a 'retired' person one simply cannot afford to attend al…

Australian author and classical musician.
He seriously studied the piano and harpsichord in London for many years.
His piano teacher was Eileen Ralf, a former professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the inspiring teacher of the great Australian pianist Geoffrey Tozer.
His harpsichord teacher was Maria Boxall, editor of the keyboard works of the English Baroque composer and organist John Blow as well as a renowned Harpsichord Method.
He yearns for the South Pacific islands but through a number of unlikely events and coincidences beached up on the cold shores of the Baltic.